


The Black Parade

by worryless2020



Series: MCR Album Fanfics [3]
Category: Black Parade - My Chemical Romance (Album), My Chemical Romance
Genre: Cancer, Gen, some strong language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:22:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22241002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/worryless2020/pseuds/worryless2020
Summary: This is a work of fiction inspired by the themes, song titles, lyrics, characters and music videos from the album 'The Black Parade' by My Chemical Romance. I claim no credit for the creative work of My Chemical Romance which provided the inspiration for this piece.
Series: MCR Album Fanfics [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1595179
Kudos: 3





	The Black Parade

THE BLACK PARADE

1\. The End. . 2. Dead! . 3. This Is How I Disappear . 4. The Sharpest Lives . 5. Welcome To The Black Parade . 6. I Don’t Love You . 7. House Of Wolves . 8. Cancer . 9. Mama . 10. Sleep . 11. Teenagers . 12. Disenchanted . 13. Famous Last Words . 14. Blood

“You’re absolutely sure he’s okay with us being here as well? He won’t feel overwhelmed by having four visitors at once?” Mikey asked.  
He, Gerard, Frank and Ray were walking down a brightly-lit hospital corridor towards the room occupied by Frank’s good friend, Christian.  
“Mikey, he specifically asked me to bring you guys. He wants to see you. For all we know, this could end up being his dying wish. He hasn’t got long left.”  
Mikey, Ray and Gerard were silent. Christian was dying of cancer.  
When they reached his room, they found the door open. He was in the bed, lying down, but propped up with several pillows, and was facing away from the door, gazing out the window. From where he was, all he could see was the grey, cloud-filled sky.  
“Knock knock,” said Frank, instead of actually knocking, and he stepped over the threshold.  
Christian turned to face his visitors and smiled.  
He was older than Frank by perhaps ten years but was still a young man. He was pale and thin and looked tired but not unhappy. His eyes were dark and expressive, and he had thick dark hair that reached the tips of his earlobes. He had found out early on that chemotherapy wouldn’t be a suitable treatment for him.  
“Hi Frank. Hi guys. Come in, come in.” He pushed himself up into a sitting position. “See, I’ve had them bring extra chairs.”  
Two cushioned chairs with wooden arms and legs stood on each side of Christian’s bed. Frank and Gerard took the two on the right, and Mikey and Ray the ones on the left.  
“Yes, thank you for that. Considerate of you,” Gerard said.  
Christian looked at him.  
“Well you’ve changed since the last time we met. Back then your hair was jet black and almost down to your shoulders.”  
“Oh,” Gerard laughed, rubbing a hand over his hair which was now cut very short and dyed platinum blonde. “Yeah, I guess I got bored of it the old way.”  
“Nothing wrong with that. It looks good. And Mikey – you don’t wear glasses anymore? Or have you just got contact lenses in?”  
“Oh yeah, no I had laser surgery a few months ago.”  
“Cool, cool, good for you. Must feel good to not need them anymore.”  
“Yeah, absolutely, yeah, it’s great.”  
“Ray… Well, you haven’t changed a bit really, have you?” Christian chuckled.  
“I’ll take that,” Ray laughed.  
“Thank you guys for coming. I really appreciate it, I… Well, for a start when Frank introduced us first I felt like I hit it off with all of you. But also… it’s always the same people who come to visit you in hospital. You know: family mainly and your super close friends. Which is great. But when you’re out and about in the world you have contact with so many more people than that, and when suddenly the people you’re closest to are all you have… well, one fancies a change. So thank you for giving me that, because I know none of you know me that well.”  
“You don’t need to thank us, Christian. We did hit it off that time we met, so we’re glad to be here. And we’re touched, more than anything, that you wanted to see us,” said Ray.  
“Thanks, Ray. That means a lot.”  
“So how have you been, Christian? How is everything going?” asked Frank.  
“Well… I suppose the first thing to say is that I’m fortunate enough to be feeling reasonably well most of the time. I spend really quite a lot of time pain-free, which is remarkable and which I’m very grateful for. Timewise, though, my oncologist said to me, ten days ago, these words exactly: ‘At this stage, now, you’ve got… maybe just two weeks… to live.’”  
Four faces in the room fell, but Frank’s markedly so.  
“Two weeks?” he whispered, leaning forward in his chair and resting his elbows in his lap. “And this was ten days ago?”  
Christian nodded. “I’m afraid so. But, the other good news is that I’ve surprised myself by how okay I am about approaching the end. I’m not scared.”  
Frank felt himself beginning to well up.  
“That’s good,” said Gerard. “I mean… besides being in pain, I guess – which you say you’re not, really – the worst thing about dying must be the fear of dying so… that’s really positive, I’m glad to hear it.”  
“Yeah,” Mikey agreed, nodding.  
“For me, the hardest part of this is leaving everyone I love. But that’s a sadness, more so than a fear, a melancholy anticipation of loneliness. But of course… I have to keep reminding myself – no matter how many times I do, it never seems to sink in – that I won’t actually be lonely. I won’t have the consciousness to experience such a feeling, or any feeling.”  
Ray, Mikey and Gerard watched Christian as he spoke, each of them wearing matching solemn expressions. Frank was looking at the floor. When he looked up he brushed a tear from his cheek.  
“Chris,” he said, “I can’t. I’m glad – I’m proud of you, and pleased for you – that you’ve come to terms so admirably with your situation. But I haven’t. I can’t listen to you speak like that, I’m sorry.”  
Christian stretched out a hand to Frank, which Frank grasped tightly.  
“I’m sorry, Frank. I do get carried away with all that sometimes. Let’s talk about something else. Actually! There is something fascinating that I… I might even be able to show you. I wonder…”  
Christian gently rubbed his fingers over his bottom lip, thinking.  
“There’s only one way to find out,” he then said, suddenly. “Would you all be willing to come on a walk with me up the corridor? There’s something I’d very much like to show you.”  
Four pairs of eyes looked at him with puzzlement, but a chorus of voices quickly ensued:  
“Yeah.”  
“Sure.”  
“Of course.”  
“Yeah.”  
“Great,” said Christian, with a smile.  
He threw the bedsheets off and inched over to the side of the bed. When his legs dangled over the edge Frank noticed that he still had his socks on. He lowered himself slowly to the ground and slid his feet into a pair of open-toed, sandal-like slippers that were sitting next to his bedside table.  
“Come on, let’s go,” he said, and the others obediently vacated their seats.  
He led them out of his room, and took a right down the corridor. The bright lights above were reflected on the shiny vinyl floor. The walls were painted a muted shade of teal.  
The corridor was not busy. They met a couple of ordinary, healthy-looking people who they assumed to be visitors, one of whom was accompanied by a weak-looking elderly man wearing a hospital gown that matched Christian’s. They also encountered a nurse with whom Christian was evidently acquainted. She looked at him curiously, eyeing his collection of companions, but smiled.  
“Hello,” she said, addressing all five of them. “Where are you off to?” She now looked particularly at Christian.  
“Nowhere in particular, Emily, I just needed to stretch my legs.”  
“Alright. I’ll be round to check on you later.”  
“Thanks.”  
They smiled at each other, and then each continued to walk in opposite directions.  
“Where are we going?” asked Mikey.  
“I… You know what? Just shut up and wait to see what happens,” replied Christian light-heartedly.  
See what happens?, all the band members thought to themselves, confused.  
Gradually, the light in the corridor seemed to grow dimmer. The distance that they could see ahead began to decrease, and as a result it seemed as if the corridor could’ve gone on forever. Even more bizarrely, the further they walked, the thinner and flimsier the walls seemed to become. What had begun as solid, sturdy and smooth structures started to fade into cracked, weak and precarious panels. The paint began to fade, until painted plaster turned to ragged wood, now paper thin.  
After a time, Christian and his companions could see a reasonable distance ahead once again. But the walls were now completely gone, and they seemed to have left the hospital far behind.  
What lay ahead of them could hardly be described as anything other than a wasteland. An expanse of brown, dusty land stretched out before them and seemed never to end. The sky overhead, a dull brownish grey, seemed oppressively low. It was dull but it was still daytime, but the sun was nowhere to be seen. A few isolated ruins of large buildings could be seen in the distance. They were a perfect match for their brown surroundings.  
About five yards ahead began two parallel queues of people, which extended as far as the eye could see. The people in each line stood facing each other. They were separated by a strip of land about the width of an average city street, and resembled the spectators of an invisible parade.  
The faces of most of them expressed apathy and defeat. None of them were neatly-groomed. Dishevelled hair, haggard faces and frayed clothes seemed to be the fashion here.  
Suddenly, as if from thin air, a woman appeared in front of Christian and the band. In most respects, she resembled the crowds ahead: she had a mass of unruly, kinky blonde hair which extended almost as far down as the small of her back. Her dress was an earthy brown, and in a state of disrepair. The skirt of it looked like a bell over her bottom half, suggesting that she wore a crinoline underneath.  
Her face looked young, but the authority it exuded was that of a much older and more experienced woman. She stood at almost seven feet tall.  
“Welcome,” she began, in an ominous yet somehow friendly tone, “to the Black Parade.”  
Then her eyes met Christian’s.  
“Oh it’s you,” she said. “How many times have you been and gone now?”  
“Hello Mama,” Christian replied.  
“You’ve brought company?”  
She looked with curiosity from Ray, to Mikey, to Gerard, and to Frank.  
“Yes, I… These are my friends. They came to visit me in hospital. They’re not dying though, I just wanted to see if I could bring them here just… well, just to see it. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to.”  
Mama grunted.  
“Yes, yes,” she sighed. “Some of the dying do try to bring their healthy friends and relatives for a ‘tour’. But this isn’t Liberty Island, it’s not a tourist attraction. They’re not meant to be here,” she said to Christian. “But when people figure out that it is actually possible to bring the healthy living here… well, there’s nothing I can do to stop them, is there? I know nothing about it until they get here and then… Then they know about it and it’s too late.”  
“Too late for what?” asked Ray.  
“Well, you’re not on death row, are you? You could die tomorrow, of course – any of you could, you know that. Death is a certainty. But until it’s confirmed an imminent certainty, people aren’t supposed to see where they go when they die! Or, well, I should say: where they go when they’re about to die. This stuff is top secret. But like I say, there’s nothing I can do to stop the healthy coming here. I can tell them to go away when they get here but there’s no point because by then, they know. But…” Mama paused. “The healthy can only get here if brought by the dying. Thank fuck!”  
Ray, Frank, Gerard and Mikey stared at her, dumbfounded. It was all familiar to Christian. He looked around at his companions and took in their expressions of the most intense bewilderment and disbelief he thought he had ever seen. He smiled to himself a smile he hoped he was managing to hide.  
“Excuse us, Mama, I think I need a moment with my friends to remove them from their state of shock,” said Christian.  
“Yes, yes, go on,” Mama replied, with another heavy sigh.  
Christian led the other four on a few paces. They were soon making their way up between the two lines of decrepit-looking people.  
“What the fuck is going on?” Frank asked, firmly.  
“Okay,” said Christian. “See… I wasn’t sure this would work because you’re all alive and well but… okay. I’ll give you the shortest version I possibly can. This is the Black Parade, although that’s not so much the name of a place as it is the name given to this state of being, i.e. dying, living as a dead man walking. This place… it’s kind of like purgatory. Except from purgatory, you go on to either heaven or hell. Or such is the idea. I don’t actually know if any of those places exist. But from here, you either return to the land of the living – literally – or you go on to… well, death. But if, like me, you’re a person who has managed to reach this place at all, it means your return to the land of the living will never be permanent. Don’t worry – yours will. Well, as permanent as it can be. We all die. But as Mama said, healthy, living people can only get here if brought by a dead man walking. I didn’t even know healthy people could get here at all until just now. But you can only find this place yourself if your death is one hundred per cent, definitely imminent.”  
Christian took a breath to continue but Mikey interrupted him.  
“So how do you get back to life? And… why can’t you just keep going back, every time you come here?”  
“To get back,” he said, turning around and pointing, “we just go back the way we came. I’ve done it four or five times now. There’s nothing to see, obviously. But it was the same in the hospital corridor, coming out here – nothing unusual, but you just have to keep walking until there is. As for returning every time… well, I have so far. Obviously. I don’t know how it’ll happen when my time comes. I just know that it will. There will come a time when I won’t be able to get back. And if Dr Sharpe’s estimation is correct, that time will be in less than a week. Three or four days, maybe.”  
Mikey, Frank, Gerard and Ray remained silent. So Christian continued.  
“As for that woman we met, Mama, she’s something of a matriarch. Kind of like a female God. It’s kind of an unwritten rule that everybody respect and obey her – everybody does. But she doesn’t really do much except look domineering and meet people when they arrive.  
“And all these people,” said Christian, looking around at the people lined up on either side of them. “These are the participants of the Black Parade. They’re people just like me. Dying but not dead.”  
“Why are they all lined up like this?” Gerard asked.  
“That, I don’t really know. On other occasions when I’ve come here, I’ve stood in these lines, but only because that’s where everybody else was. You get talking to people, you know. Just like you do anywhere else, in life. But why the lines formed originally, who knows? Anyway, come on. Let’s take a wander over this way.”  
He led them towards one of the ruins they had noticed when they arrived.  
“I hope you’re finding this little excursion interesting. Much as you mightn’t want to think about it, you’ll all find yourselves back here one day. Probably not together. Definitely not with me. So… surely it’s worth seeing, to know what to expect.”  
“Yes, it’s… It’s quite amazing,” replied Gerard.  
“I can’t believe… the answer to that huge question, nearly the most fundamental question – What happens when we die? – has been partially answered,” said Frank.  
“Yes, indeed. Quite something, isn’t it? Plus, let’s face it. This has been a lot more fun than if we’d just sat around in my hospital room.”  
The others were unsure whether “fun” was the word to use, but they had to agree it had been more interesting.  
Christian stepped up onto a crumbling step that led right to what had once been a doorway. Above this entrance, on what used to be a sign, were the letters: H S F W LV , unevenly spaced out.  
The band followed Christian inside the ruined building, and looked around. The two front corners, on either side of the doorway they had come through, were intact, but the walls there were only about three feet high. Opposite, there were no corners, but the middle section of the back wall was still standing. In it was an archway with a view of the barren horizon way beyond. Whether the archway had been there to begin with, or was more of an opening, a result of the passing ages, was unclear. It didn’t start at ground level, but had a set of three stone steps leading up to it.  
“What’s this place?” Frank asked.  
“Don’t really know that either,” Christian answered. “Just part of the tour. There’s something… bleak, but beautiful about it though, don’t you think?”  
“Yeah, it seems…” Ray began. “Even though the whole place is eerily quiet, somehow this feels like a peaceful refuge.”  
Christian nodded.  
“I agree. But I can’t put my finger on it either. It’s not like there’s a chaotic world to escape from in the Black Parade. But whenever I come here I feel like I’ve escaped something – some kind of hubbub.”  
Christian glanced up at the archway in the back wall, and began to approach the steps that led to it.  
“Strange,” he said, starting to climb them.  
The band members watched his tired legs, barely peeping out between the hem of his hospital gown and the tops of his socks.  
“I could’ve sworn there was a clear view over the horizon up here.”  
To him it looked as if the archway had had a pitch black panel inserted in it.  
When he reached the top, the band close behind him, he reached out through the archway and could feel nothing.  
“Christian… What are you talking about?” asked Frank, who could clearly see the horizon, and his friend stretching out as if trying to reach it.  
Suddenly, Christian disappeared. As to how it happened, the band couldn’t decide whether he had fallen, or whether he had been somehow propelled forward through the air and shrunk into nothing.  
With barely a moment to register what had happened, Frank, Gerard, Ray and Mikey found themselves back in the bright hospital corridor. They looked around.  
“Whoa, what just happened?” said Gerard.  
“No idea!” Mikey exclaimed.  
Frank looked around in a panic.  
“Where’s Christian?” he said.  
“We can’t go back to the Black Parade without him,” Ray replied. “So come on, we’ll go back to his room and see.”  
Frank felt his palms sweating, his heart pounding and his stomach turning as he and the others walked back down the corridor towards Christian’s room.  
When they got there, before they even walked inside, they could see Christian, lying in the bed with his eyes closed, looking very peaceful.  
Two nurses and a doctor were also there. Before any of them noticed the band standing in the doorway, and immediately before Frank ran to Christian’s bedside, the doctor looked solemnly at his watch and said quietly, “Time of death: 18:11.”


End file.
